


Keywords

by Golden_Ticket



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Adults adulting, F/M, I have fallen and I can't get up, Mutual Pining, faking my way around ice dance knowledge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 07:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13759605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Ticket/pseuds/Golden_Ticket
Summary: The words they use, and what they mean.Post-Gold III&IV / ft. current events





	1. Together

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on their images and public personas and running with the narrative.  
> I don't presume knowing what is real or not.
> 
> This isn't so much of TS, more of what I think their story could be.

_Together._  

 

That’s the one they use most often. Every time they let go of each other before their twizzles or a step sequence that has them dance beside one another rather than interlocked or connected with whatever handy body part. It reminds them to keep close, to keep their bodies aligned, the axis of their spines just parallel and their feet hitting the ice just right, just together, like so. In the best of cases, that ‘Together’ is followed by twin whooshes of blades or a perfectly in sync halt on a spin.

 

Off ice, _together_ means work, mostly. It means packed schedules and smiling for cameras, it means getting up at five in the morning to go to the gym, then skate, then stretch, then physiotherapy, then coaching, then dancing and to eat only what’s approved by their dietician and to go sleep when it says they should on their time sheets. It’s structure and stamina. ‘Together’ is work. 

 

Even their togetherness is work–and it has been, for about twenty years now. There have been therapy sessions (they don’t call them that, they call them 'mental prep’, but therapy is really what they are) in their long partnership where they would talk over each other and argue and argue until both their voices were hoarse. There had been those where they wouldn’t say a word directly to each other, only passive-aggressively talk _about_ the other in third-person _at_ the psychologist opposite them. Those had always been the worst. Still, there had never truly been a moment where they had left even one of those gruelling sessions questioning the work, questioning wether or not striving for togetherness was worth it, if the effort to align their vastly different characters enough to keep them functioning partners, was justified.

 

Cynical people would maybe say they kept working on it because together, they had achieved a level of success that would not be possible without the other (although he doubts that very much, thinking that she would make even the last sorry motherfucker shine out on the ice if only she would let him hold her hand). And sometimes, on particularly daunting days spent walking firmly on each other’s nerves, either one of them, in the privacy of their rooms, would wonder if that was it, too. But before long, they’d both come to the same conclusion, without fail. (They wouldn’t tell each other this until much later, though).

 

Scott would always circle back around to Tessa, to the sacrifices she had made for him along the way to keep dragging his ass across the dingy and not-so dingy rinks of this world. Starting with her spot at the ballet school, which she passed up on (twice) because she had already committed herself to their partnership (at nine or ten years old, no less) to getting hail-mary surgeries on both her legs for the blind hope of maintaining their career, to every party she beckoned him home from for the sake of an early morning training session that was almost always completely necessary, at time acting more like a mother than anything else. So whenever he doubted ‘Together’, it all came down to Tessa and he knew as long as she was still on board, he would be too. And he would be damned if he was the one to get her off that board.

 

Because the truth is he loves skating, loves dancing (even if that had taken some time) and he loves their career (even the prying cameras and the ceaseless publicity events they had to attend on a weekly basis)–but as much as he does, it would all loose it’s appeal if Tess would walk away. And that’s what it had always been like. Ice dancing was not right when it wasn’t with her, not all the way. Even if he loves the sport so much he could cry sometimes, he doesn’t want to imagine doing it with anybody else. For some of the shows, when they paired him up with another dancer for this or that lift, it never felt right, even tangible. It felt like he was a cog in a machine that didn’t belong where it was put and he was only working properly, when she came back to his arms. So he had spent the better part of his life off ice making ‘Together’ work with her because on ice, ‘Together' was all that ever really mattered. In the end, everything he did, he did for her, so if his life was to be spend working hard enough at himself so that she could stand him, he’d do it. Any day.

 

Tessa, in turn, never questioned skating with him at all, she just sometimes questioned going on altogether. Mostly in those moments when she could barely stand or think from the pain in her legs and he was too young and carefree to fully comprehend what that had meat for her at the time, how terrible she felt, how alone and how in pain she’d been. The two months in recovery after the first surgery where they wouldn’t talk to each other (the real, less obvious reasons for this they only acknowledge in dead nights after lots of wine) had been the darkest time in their long twenty years together. A part of her heart still tightens up, even after all these years, when she thinks of it now, or when someone brings it up or asks about it (which happens too often for her taste). One night after another frustratingly futile attempt of getting through their Free Dance for Worlds, he had asked her point blank: “Do you wanna quit, Tessa?” 

 

And she had looked around instinctively for their psychologist for help, because usually they would only have those tough kind of talks with a professional present. Not this time, though. This time, he had walked her to her apartment and had talked her into carrying her gym bag all the way into her bedroom (which had been silly, even in how much pain she was in, she could damn well still carry her own bag, but tell that to Scott Moir, who to this day still pushes her suitcase along with his when they walk anywhere). This time, she had been alone with him. With him and that question and a moment of hesitation on her part which broke his heart and face open in front of her. So at odds with her delicate throw pillows and the new, pristine light-grey comforter she had bought.

“Well, do you?” He had repeated and she could tell by the way his eyebrows knotted together that he had heard his own voice break and hated them both for it.

“No, of course not.” She had said then and until that happened, she hadn’t been sure of that in the slightest. 

 

Still, in the face of the suddenly very real possibility of never skating again, never skating _with him_ again (and by extension probably removing him from her life to a significant degree), the only answer could ever, _ever_ be ‘No’. And so they had kept going and dragged each other out of their tiff by the hair. They had learned their togetherness like the steps to a dance. Listen to each other, acknowledge the pain, understand the process, the strategies, learn to read between the lines of what he says and the lines on his face when he doesn’t say anything. They had had that once, she remembers keenly. When they were children together, always half in love but completely oblivious to it, just enough to want to understand each other. In their formative years, that will to understand had often made way for stubbornness, for wanting things from the other they couldn’t give. Always at different times, never together in that. 

And the one night they were, when both of them wanted the same thing, it took less than a day, after, to send them on completely different trajectories. Her onto a surgeons table yet again and him into a string of relationships with people who where startlingly like her. But not back into her bed again, not for a very long time. She had decided it had been a mistake, that she needed to focus on getting better first and being professional second and he did not forgive her for that for years. 

 

Even long after they’d made up, she knew he was still working through that whole thing. She felt it in every press of his lips on her skin that wasn’t exactly choreographed. Always in practice, rarely ever when it counted but still, he did that. He kept doing that. She tried her best to ignore it. Keeping her feelings for him, whatever they might have been, close to her chest, close enough so that even she wasn’t all the way sure what they were. 

 

And one would think with the whole world constantly speculating and prying and pushing and asking about what exactly they felt for each other and what exact label they wanted to slap on their relationship, they would have some idea about it. “It’s unique,” Scott would always say, a talking point given to him inadvertently in one of their therapy sessions when emotions had started running high for off-ice reasons between them when Tessa was barely thirteen. “It’s not like a marriage, it’s not like brother and sister.” He would continue and leave everyone (including themselves) wondering, what exactly were they then?

“Business partners,” she had finally declared and postulated, henceforth.

 

A part of her still resents that term because it sounds cold and impersonal, like they would turn at their heels at the end of a day in the rink and be done with each other. Like they will thank each other politely for a successful career at their retirement and then disappear from each others lives. But it was the one term harsh and unsexy enough to get people off their case for a while. She really had never liked humouring the world as it tried to figure out what they were to each other when they always had had such a hard time figuring it out themselves.

“Business partners,” Scott had snickered once, a couple of years ago in some non-descript hotel on tour. “That’s such a gross understatement, I dunno how to keep a straight face saying that.”

 

Scott is passionate, that is his thing. It’s what makes him a good athlete and a good person (mostly). It’s definitely a big part of the reason why periodically the sports circuits and message boards of the world go insane about Tess and him. They can’t fathom how they can skate like they do and not give them the satisfactory answer, the confirmation of the logical conclusion; that they love each other deeply, explicitly sexually, and are planning a wedding and expecting twins. Sometimes, neither can he. But before…before things shifted around somewhat after moving to Montreal, Tessa’s damn ‘business partners’ brand had been somehow the most fitting term, even if it covered maybe only the tip of the iceberg there. But that was at least comprehendible. As opposed to: “I think I loved her without knowing it since I was ten but my whole life is built around the necessity of us being together on the ice and no one can promise us we’ll keep that if we go there and mess it up. So we decided not to. Well, she decided and I agreed. Eventually.”  

 

Now, the media would probably eat that up today as it would have back then but it’s not something he’s willing to share. So he sticks to words like “unique” and “special” and “fortunate” to describe what they share between them. He hopes every time that he doesn’t say something stupid whenever he has a mic shoved in his face to give himself away. With varying degrees of success. Whenever he slips up, he can feel Tess’ eyes shoot to him, reprimanding softly. Back in the messier days, it had been an exasperated call to discipline and privacy on her part. Now, in Korea for their third Olympic games representing Canada, it’s a little different but not by much. Nowadays, he hears her whisper “Not yet” in his head, every time she draws in a sharp breath when he says yet another stupid thing about how he still likes doing it (meaning the skating, the _skating!_ ) with her or how they fell back in love with each other or how she is restless before falling asleep and stumblingly covers it up in the aftermath.

 

“Are you very mad?” He asks her once in a taxi on the streets of Seoul on their second extra training day after the team ice skating event in Pyeungchang.

“No,” she says, smiling that Tessa-smile which makes her look sixteen, “I mean, you should watch yourself but at least your loose lips keep us on our toes. I swear I’ll fall asleep standing up the next time I have to talk about being present and really enjoying every moment of these games.”

Somewhere there, she has switched into interview-voice and he cackles lightly.

“Don’t forget our team who have prepared us so well,” he exclaims and laughs. “But it’s all still true,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s true but I feel like a broken record,” Tessa muses. “How many times and in how many ways can you describe how it feels to do a good skate at the Olympics? Can’t they, like, ask about our favourite dinosaurs for a change?”

Scott laughs, loud enough for the taxi driver to turn his head to them with a start.

“Well, Miss Tessa Virtue, what _is_ your favourite dino?” He asks with a mock-reporter voice after shooting a quick apologetic glance at the driver.

“Brachiosaurus,” she replies like a shot and he has a hard time not to laugh even louder than before.

 

“Wow, you really thought about this, eh?” 

She just shrugs. “What’s yours?” He crinkles his forehead in thought. “No wait, I know.”

“Really? ‘Cause I have no idea,” he says.

“Stegosaurus.” She proclaims and then holds a finger up for him to wait until she has goggled it and is holding out the pictures to him.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” he says, reaching to pull the phone closer and trapping her lithe fingers under his in the process, unable to resist the temptation of squeezing them just a bit. “That is my favourite dinosaur.”

“See,” she says. “Told you you should come to the museum with me some time.”

“No, but seriously,” Scott asks her after a moment. “Do you want to just tell them all to go fuck themselves and stop asking us about what we are?”

“Good luck with that,” Tessa says with composed resignation. “Everything we say now will pull the focus off our work. I can deal with the dodging all day, though. You just have to say a little fewer sweet things about me, I think.”

 

That doesn’t work too well after they win the fourth Olympian gold of their lives. Of course the first question after “How did you feel when the music ended?” is “So what’s the deal with you two now?” and they’re both tired to death of it. Still, the world has a way of rattling even the greatest resolve to keep what’s so terribly and truthfully private, _private_.

“That fucking video, man,” Scott says, exasperatedly in a brief moment alone the day after the win, sometime between one and the next interview. After the TV people had sprung that montage video of their twenty years together on them and he had started crying halfway through watching it like an idiot.

“Bad enough for ‘business relationship’, apparently,” Tessa smirks and he hates her a little bit for never getting (or at least appearing not to get) rattled about these things. 

 

In the interview, he had said the annoying thing again, the _business partner_ thing, but he refused to give up any more or address the same question over and over again with the same answer that was never, ever an answer. And he was not going to tell the truth, because who would understand that? Who would, when even Tessa and him weren’t sure.

So instead, when they are asked about their relationship status(es) yet again what feels like a heartbeat later, he says “It’s none of your business”. From the corner of his eyes he can see Tessa’s plastered interview-smile and knows that she is probably zoning out until he is finished rambling and so he does finish. He isn’t really sure what he is trying to say as he goes on. If it comes across that he means possibly retiring in order to open their life up to romantic possibilities separate from each other or if it seems like he is talking about them, about retiring so that they can give whatever it is between them a shot and “see where it goes”. He likes that his words come out vague enough for once to mean both. Which is wonderful, because he does not like to lie.

 

After six more times of answering that horrid question and finally, _finally_ getting to spend some real time with their families, they eventually end up back in Tessa’s room when it’s already way past bed time and lie together on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

“How do you feel about today?” She asks, echoing one of their usual mental-coaching session’s get-in questions.

“Exhausted,” he says honestly. “The entire thing is a minefield.”

“I know,” she agrees. “I guess that’s the price to pay though, maybe. People are invested in us…so they want to know.”

“Yeah, well, _I’d_ like to know too,” he groans. “I wish we could just suss it out by ourselves for a _second_. I mean…do you have any idea what we’re doing really?”

“No,” she admits and a soft, warm hand closes around his tenderly only to the wander off to feel up and down his arm (it’s a little distracting). 

“But, like, you know, we get back in the bubble,” Tessa tells him quietly. “Figure this out on our own time. Nobody needs to know anything. It’s just us.”

 

“I’m scared,” he says and he doesn’t need to explain what he is scared of. He is scared of really taking that step with her, of the risk of losing what they have together over the pitfalls of romantic relationships, of not being together anymore because they decided to be _together_. She knows it already and he is pretty darn sure she feels the exact same way.

“Me too,” she says and then scoots a little closer to him, rolling to her side to look at him. “But we have time now. All this attention will fade eventually and then we can take all the time in the world to figure this out. See how it goes, no pressure.”

“I’m just terrified of losing you, of losing this,” he confesses and doesn’t manage to look at her.

“You won’t, we’re not gonna lose each other,” she promises and keeps running her hand over his arm at his side. “No matter what, I love you. No matter what, we’re together. That won’t change.”

“Together?” He asks again, finally finding her beautiful green eyes like soft pools of emerald calm. She is always so poised and so sure about everything, it’s second nature to feel safer once she looks at him like that, like she has seen the future and it’s nothing to worry about.

“Together,” she echos and presses a kiss, soft like a feather on his cheek.

 

No more than that, no more until they’re home and have the chance to wrap their heads around just how _together_ they could be.


	2. Be With Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the angst train!
> 
> (Now we've arrived at mostly pure fiction, fyi.) I hope you enjoy anyway ;)

_Be with me._

 

This one is often the follow-up to “Together”, it means roughly the same thing, only that it’s more an emotional cue than a physical one. Scott likes to use it slightly more often than Tessa does. Sometimes it’s interchangeable with “Look at me” but he reserves that for the more heated programs they do. “Look at me” was for Carmen. “Be with me” was for Umbrellas. It works like a spell. Once they’re on the ice, bleeding themselves into the characters they portray and he whispers it under his breath, so low and so quick that a camera can’t really pick it up, it brings Tessa right to him, fixing on his eyes, breathing when he breathes, blinking when he blinks, thinking what he thinks. Its quite beautiful. Since Montreal, for Tessa especially, it’s the one keyword that helps her snap out of her professional distance when they are ‘outside’, the one that is becoming more and more strenuous to uphold by the day. 

 

It feels like she is constantly trying to hold a dam full of cracks together with her fingernails, trying to keep the water from breaking through and carrying her away. Sometimes, Scott is not helping at all with that. But on the ice, once he says those three little words, she can relax and open up herself to the moment. Because it’s a part of the routine, easily sellable as play-pretend. Which would strike her as ironic if she had time for those musings; that the one time she can express how she really feels is when the whole world believes (or most of the world anyway) that they are faking it. She knows he would sometimes like to use that spell on her off-ice. But it’s not the right time. Especially in moments when a myriad of (internationally) broadcasting cameras are trained on them and they are on the podium for the darn flower ceremony and Scott leans into her like he does when he is about to kiss her. (Which she hasn’t really allowed him since they left Montreal.) Instantly, all her alarm bells had gone off and she had leaned back, her lips set in a tight smile and her eyes exclamation marks of warning. Scott had stopped short and she knew him well enough to see the flicker of hurt in his eyes. When he half-grumbled “Just relax, babe” to her, she understood perfectly that she had upset him. 

 

Fortunately, winning an Olympic gold medal is distracting enough for him to get over this particular incident quickly and in the following whirlwind days, Scott acts steadfast enough, only slipping up so many times and really balancing their act of “deny everything” on the perfect line between vagueness and relativity which means they aren’t technically lying about anything but also leave people none the wiser about what is really going on. This way, they can figure it all out on their own time and fend off the immense pressure of what feels like a country acting like they _owe_ it to the world to get their shit together. Tessa never had much of a spiteful streak but in the face of all that scrutiny, it certainly comes out a little bit. Sure she is grateful for all the support and mostly people are really sweet about it and rationally, she knows all the suggestions and questions and prying comes from a nice place in people’s hearts. But if there’s a ton of rose petals crashing down on you, you’re just as crushed as you would be by bricks. 

 

Somehow, they come out of Pyeungchang and their (very probably definitely) last exhibition skate alive (lots of unshed tears, lots of weird and conflicting emotions bubbling over but mostly bone-crushing fatigue from the past week) and when she settles into her first class seat on the plane home, her head lands easily on Scott’s shoulder. He squeezes her hand and then drops a short but firm kiss on her head. Just for a moment, everything is peaceful and perfect. She drifts off quickly. Somewhere in the distance, she hears him whisper “Be with me” but she isn’t sure if he really said it or if she’s already dreaming and she is dead to the world before she figures it out. Back home, their arrival equates to a media circus potentially bigger than that time when William and Kate visited and it’s frankly a little bit ridiculous how they’re being hailed as practically royalty themselves. Scott does what he said he would; after sort of managing to get through at least twenty interviews from exiting the plane from South Korea to the London airport parking lot without killing anyone (which had been a near thing), he packs his bags, kisses her on the side of her mouth between two big cars where they’re pretty sure no one can see and gets on the road home with his family. 

“I’ll see you first thing when I get back,” he tells her, and it’s not a question. 

 

Tessa takes the time that he is gone ('gone' being relative, as he's literally twenty minutes away from her and also constantly texting) to re-familiarize herself with what it’s like to be Tessa, the woman instead of Tessa, the Olympic champion. It’s hard. Her house in London feels at once really vast and empty and terribly tiny and stuffy, so she goes to see her family right away and then calls off every coffee date she had cramped into her schedule. She is citing a cold that usually wouldn’t stop her from going out, honestly, she just doesn't feel like seeing anybody other than her family and she has some press things to do in a couple of days that she needs to be rested for. And technically, she isn’t lying..she does have a cough, picked it up from Scott who had started sniffling and sneezing even back in Korea. That was something you could place very safe bets on, that basically minutes after the one big skate, the competitive season’s end, Scott Moir would get a cold and not properly recover for weeks. And then she’d catch it from him and they’d both be knocked out for a couple of days. It was just their body’s way of responding to the sudden loss of tension, like the oxygen masks on the plane dropping from the overhead compartments once the pressure sunk. So Scott is coughing and she is constantly blowing her nose for the entire week of interviews they have to get through after he comes back from Ilderton. 

 

“Seventeen,” Scott tells her near the end of it and she just rolls her eyes. Seventeen times that they’d had to answer a (polite, Canadian) variant of the “Are you a couple?” question and the “Where does it go from here?” question, enough to make her a little crazy. In fact it makes her so crazy that by the end of the week, she is so fed up with it all that she is actually a little mad at him, which is insane (she knows that!) because he really didn’t do anything wrong (other than consistently look at her like she hangs the moon at the most unfortunate of times). It’s in the quiet of a backstage dressing room at some TV show that he walks in on her packing her things and closes the door behind him, now completely by themselves for the first time in days. 

“What is it with _you_?” He asks point blank, face serious and body blocking the door just subtly enough for her to get the message; that neither of them is leaving the room before she has told him what’s up. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” she sighs and stops shoving things into her bag because her movements are getting sharper and she is trying to not come off aggressive. “I’m just tired. I’m annoyed. I can’t stand that question anymore.” And now that she has started, she can’t stop. Like she’s an upside down-wine bottle and Scott has just pulled the cork. “I know I should be flattered but I’m not, I’m just frustrated and I think it’s rude and intrusive and I want to go home and the worst thing is that I can’t look at you right now and that’s making me so mad. I’m mad at you, for no reason at all. Just because of all of these people. I feel like I’m resenting you and that’s horrible and I hate it and I…I just want to sleep. And get away from here.”

 

“Wait, you’re mad at _me_?” He asks her and touches his hand on his chest, his voice dipping up high. “What did _I_ do?”

“Nothing!” She half-yells, immediately reigning herself in because she doesn’t know how thick the walls surrounding them are. “That’s the point! You did nothing wrong but I’m so annoyed. And I know that's what we signed up for and we have our scripts and everything but I'm just so sick of it. I don’t want to be these people anymore, I don’t want to be in front of a camera for just one _fucking_ day.”

Her voice breaks on the curse (she doesn’t curse much, not until she is really worked up) and she has to pinch the bridge of her nose hard to keep from angry-crying and ruining her make-up.

“Tessa,” Scott whispers softly, with so much sympathy it would break her apart if she wasn’t so irrationally fed up with him. 

Then, from half closed eye-lids, she sees him dig into his pant pockets and take out his phone.

 

Keeping his eyes on Tessa who seems to be holding onto herself by a thread, Scott fumbles for his phone and only glances down long enough to call their press agent who picks up at the first ring because he is just down the hall, probably sighing exasperatedly at their schedule because they have to be going somewhere.

“Scott, what is it,” comes the voice from the line.

“Can you please cancel the rest of the day and clear the weekend for us too?”

 

Tessa looks up from under her hand and drops it in disbelief. Surely he can’t be doing what it seems he’s doing. She makes a face in protest but he holds up a finger to shush her.

“Frankly, I don’t care,” she hears Scott say. “We’re exhausted, we’re both sick, we need rest. Just tell them we’re…I dunno, contagious or something. Just cancel the rest of the week.” He looks at her for a moment and then adds “And whatever we have before Montreal, too.”

 

And that’s that. He’s not letting her argue, he just picks up where she stopped packing her bag, gathering her comb and tights from one of the chairs. She takes a breath to reprimand him,  positively scandalised, to say something about obligations and discipline and contracts but he interrupts her before she can get a word out.

“Nope,” he says, suddenly very immersed in stuffing her things away. “You’re right, you should go home and get some rest. And I’ll leave you alone for a day or two.” Now he’s the one shoving about in her bag more harshly than necessary. “And then I’m cooking you dinner and by that I mean really fancy fucking take-out and we’ll be _alone_. No cameras, no pretending, none of this.” When he finally looks back up at her, she can feel how every single muscle in her face is relaxing.  He is such a good person, she marvels, inwardly, for a heartbeat. Leave it to him to know what’s good for her better than she does. “Be with me, T,” he says then, softly and fixes her with a gaze usually reserved for the rink. “It’s _us_. It’s just us.”

 

Scott does what he has told her. He leaves her alone for exactly two days. He’s not even texting her, even if that’s hard but he understands that it’s necessary. He’d downright panicked when she told him she was starting to resent him, a white hot, searing fear that had split him to the bone but it had also, simultaneously tugged at his spite and drive. He was going to show her. She didn’t want to be the people in front of the cameras anymore? Fine! He would make her the most private of evenings, the most secluded and secret and _theirs_ that he could. He has never been a fan of the whole hush-hush of it all, even if he understands that it's necessary. They are athletes, first and foremost, and the world really shouldn't be so hung up on their personal lives. But be that as it may, he has always struggled to keep his wits about himself when it came to her. And it's a thin line to walk between praising his skating partner of twenty years when asked about her and stupidly rambling about how much he loves the woman she has grown into in a decidedly un-business-like manner. At the end of the day when all is said and done, he can live with the world knowing that he loves her, too. He only hopes that she understands that it's all real this time around, that he's not playing-pretend or acting for the cameras. That true to the bone, he loves, loves, _loves_ her. So much it's a little bit ridiculous.

So it’s to re-runs of old sitcoms that he cleans up what little mess he’d had the chance to make of his place and orders in a feast of pasta and salad and double-chocolate muffins for good measure and spends a ridiculous amount of time dressing up the place. He has flowers sent over, every kind that she likes, and puts out candles and nice placemats and the good dishes and when it’s finally done, he’s really proud of himself. Only that he has planned with a big time buffer and is now done with twenty minutes still to go until she gets there and he’s suddenly nervous? Why is he nervous? That’s ridiculous. It’s Tessa, _his_ Tessa. Nothing was going to happen there that night that hadn’t already happened. But still, it did feel momentous somehow and different. Distinctly different and eventually, ten minutes into pacing up and down his living room and changing his shirt (twice), he figures out why. 

 

He has never done anything like this before for her, set up his living room for a date night and make everything romantic. Usually when they spent time alone together it was french fries (or salad, if they were in training) and sweat pants and couches. For god’s sake, Tessa had popped zits on his back with disconcerting glee on the very couch he had now arranged the throw pillows she had gotten him on (and which usually lay around scattered on the carpet because he would play catch with them for some reason). But now he's suddenly nervous to have her come over. In what world? 

Thankfully, another seven minutes later (Tessa tended to be over-punctual when she was nervous about things, which was maybe a good sign?), she puts him out of his misery by ringing his door bell. In the brief moment between pushing down the handle and opening the door, he is worried that she might not know this is somewhat of a fancy date-night and worries that she might stand there in her yoga pants and be terribly thrown off by all the candlelight and flowers. But then he sees her and for a moment, he can’t do anything but grin at her like an idiot. She’s beautiful, she’s always beautiful but tonight, she looks like a million dollars. She grins back at him and he doesn’t wait to pull her into his arms for a big hug.

 

“Scott Moir, I’m impressed,” she says once he lets go and leads her into his spacious living room where he moved the dining table into the dead center. “Aww, you even arranged the pillows. It looks really good like that.”

“What’s that tone?” He asks in the face of her "Told you so"-cadence and they’re bantering back and forth by the time he puts the starters out. This is going great.

 

Until it doesn’t. Halfway through his second slice of baguette, they kind of fall silent and Tessa glances around for a hot second which has her looking almost lost.

“What?” He asks, never one to not remark on her changes in mood. She shakes her head, as if to shoo a fly.

“Nothing, I just…,” she begins. “This is a date, eh?”

“I guess.”

“It’s a little bit weird.”

“No, it isn’t,” he laughs, trying to conceal the very legitimate pause she just gave him. “What are you talking about?”

Tessa rolls her eyes but in that sweet way that means she is trying not to laugh. “Ugh, shut up, you,” she chuckles. “You have a crumb on your chin.” 

 

They finish the meal in all smiles and somewhere around Tessa’s second muffin (to his hollering “Treat yo’ self!”), they start feeling like Tessa and Scott again, the version of them that’s undoubtedly real and raw and not for the cameras. When Tessa kicks off her high heels, he knows he has her back and he grins, lopsided and from ear to ear when she pushes up the volume to the song she had put on on her phone connected to his bluetooth boxes. She neatly folds the muffin wrapping paper and places it on her plate (like she would) and pours herself a bit more wine. And then she beckons him to the couch.

 

Tessa feels two very distinct, very adversarial emotions at the same time as Scott makes his way over to join her on the sofa. The first is lust. Can’t be put any other way. The past two days, after mending her frayed nerves with chocolate and phone calls with her mother and sister, she had started anticipating being alone with him. For the first time since before Korea, she can see no objection to spending the night with him and she is excited to, jumping out of her skin almost. But then the second one is something akin to…reluctance. Which is unbidden and unexplainable. Yet if she were to try to explain it to herself (and she had, on the way over) it would probably be the implication this night had or would have. It is the first time in their life that the door is wide open on a real, tangible future outside of their career. A romantic one. A relationship, a proper one with labels and commitment (well, a different kind of commitment anyway) and while she wanted that to be exhilarating, really it felt terrifying. Too much to sort through, too big, too confusing for the flowers and the candles and Scott’s eyes that are traveling down the neckline of her light blue dress as he settles in next to her and so she kisses him next. To drown out the sinking feeling in her stomach and because she wants to. It’s bumpy at first, because she went in too fast and really, for all their years together, they haven’t done this nearly enough.

 

He responds in kind, eagerly, quickly, and deepens the kiss. He’s really good at this and it only feels like kissing a brother for a second and she giggles against his lips when the thought comes and passes and he breathes a “Hmm?” against her mouth.

“Noffin,” she replies, muffled by his lips and then does lean back to say something. “I missed doing this.”

Scott groans and shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how hard it was not to kiss you out there?”

“Oh, I got a pretty good idea,” she laughs easily. “Sometimes I thought you’d really do it and we’d have to talk ourselves out of that somehow.”

“You looked at me like that almost every time I got even close to you,” he says, a hint of exasperation in his voice, which she can forgive because he looks so darn handsome right now.

“Well, I didn’t want to share,” she says, holding his gaze so he understands that she’s serious. “This moment,” she moves her free hand (the one not currently wrapped around his neck) in a circle between them, “is ours. Yours and mine, _alone_.”

 

She has said this to him before taking the ice so many times she can’t put a number on it, but now it takes on a whole other meaning and to underline her point (and drown out the naggingly persistent pit tugging at the back of her spine of things that feel decidedly not nice enough to be allowed to stay), she kisses him again, pulling him closer until he gasps into her mouth and pulls at her half-up half-down hair.

 

Scott is delirious with her and drunk from it more than the two glasses of wine he’s had. Kissing Tessa is even better than skating with her and that is really, _really_ saying something. He pours his soul into it, his whole life and it feels like he is taking leave of his body for a second there, only coming back to himself when his push to manoeuvre her under him is met with her body tensing up. He has not sent most of his life getting to know every inch of that body, every press and pull and muscle movement and mechanism, to miss when something there shifts. He breaks apart from her and leans back to look at her face.

 

Her hair is a mess, her lipstick (the 24h-super-stay-kind) smudged (ha!) and her cheeks are flaring red and her mouth is grinning, breath coming in laboured huffs. But there is something wrong with the corners of her eyes. They flicker. They don’t do that when she is happy. And then the most terrible thing he has ever seen in his thirty years on this earth happens. Her features contort, ever so slightly but surely and then just as her expression falls apart to a subdued  version of confused terror, he comes back to his senses. Instantly, his throat closes off and he feels like he can’t breathe. The change of trajectory is startling, whiplash inducing and he feels a daunting sense of having been there before. And he has dreaded this moment for years. And it’s enough to get him spiralling. 

 

“This isn’t working, is it?” He says after a moment that could’ve lasted a second or a millennia, he has lost all sense of time and space in a heartbeat. 

She looks at him and her head wobbles, eyes teary, like she can’t understand anything anymore and there’s no words. He breathes hard. 

“I can’t believe this,” he whispers and buries his face in his hand (the one not currently curled around her thigh).

“Scott,” she breathes, pleadingly, apologetically but he knows, he _knows_.

“No, you’re right,” he mumbles and re-emerges from his hide-out, unable to keep the tears at bay. “It’s…we…I understand.”

“We just have to…keep our head here, be realistic,” Tessa says, her voice trembling like no tomorrow. “I mean.” She takes a deep breath first and then his hand and he is in a petrified awe of how she is still able to do words. “Practically, you are moving back home, right? And I’m not…ready for that. I can’t be done with everything at twenty-eight. I still want to have a goal, another career and I would never drag you along for that. And you won’t ask me to give it up to come with you either. And say we try anyway, what if? What if, _you know_?”

 

And isn’t that what it’s always been, what has stopped them for ten years, every time they went there, even in jest, even in thought? It’s so horrendous that she can’t even say it out loud. What if they break up? What if it ends badly and they ruin what they have built so meticulously, so committed and vigorous in so, so many years? What if they stop being Tessa and Scott and become estranged lovers or bitter divorcees? Scott can say with relative certainty that he wouldn’t survive that.

 

“Scott,” Tessa brings him back to reality like a shot, her lip quivering dangerously. “Say something.”

“I…I don’t know,” he stammers and his voice sounds so brittle, he is quite shocked by it.

“Do you wanna risk this?” She looks almost like she wants him to convince her but he can’t get himself to. Because the truth is, he can’t. 

He has a terrible, terrible track record with women and he can’t promise her forever and a guarantee of forever is what it would take to not run the risk of losing each other. So what is he to do?

So after another eternity of a moment, he looks away, across his tastefully arranged apartment (assembled by the woman who has his heart in her hands this very moment) and the flowers and the candles and says. “No.”

 

Tessa swallows slowly and then nods, even slower. “And you’re sure? Because it’s important we make this decision together,” she says, making him look at her with a soft squeeze of his knee. “It’s important, Scott. We _need_ to agree on this.”

He nods, even though it feels like tearing out his soul with his own hands, like falling into a frozen lake and feeling a million little pins puncture his body. “I agree,” he mutters and history repeats itself. They’re back here again, at the crossroads. And what he had thought to be a finish line is now evaporated. He had thought at the end of their career, they could open up that part of their life to each other, with that career no longer at stake. But now with his career over, their relationship was near all that had any meaning, true, real meaning in his life and a romantic relationship would put that at stake. And that was unthinkable. 

 

“Me too,” whispers Tessa and when he looks up, dreading the sight and finds her crying as suspected (she never cries), he can’t keep in the sob that has been lodged in the back of his throat for what seems a lifetime now. He leans in, touching his forehead against hers and his heart is beating so fast and hard, he thinks he might be going into cardiac arrest. Alas, he stays painfully, pitifully conscious, and sad, then angry. And then desperate. He whispers her name. She answers with a kiss, wet and shaken.

 

He kisses her back. “Be with me,” he pleads, almost too quiet to catch. “Just for tonight. _Please._ Just to say goodbye.”

He doesn’t need to ask twice. 

 

After, when they lie spent underneath his crumpled sheets, she lies with her head on his chest and he feels like he already died. Stupidly, he thinks of one of her damn beloved 80s songs, how he _died in her arms tonight_ and has to laugh, bitterly, at this mess of a life that had gifted him this angel to have and hold but made her too precious to really keep, to really have, fully and blindly.

“Ah, fuck,” he groans with a strange and dark gallows humour. “How can we love each other this much and not get this right?”

Instead of answering, Tessa lifts her head at him, her face twisted in a painful grimace that breaks his heart all over again. She shakes her head.

“No being angry. Not tonight,” she whispers. “Be with me.” She echoes him, echoes _them_  (the million times they have said this to each other) and he sinks back into her like he was made for that alone.

 

But when the next season rolls around, she’s not with him anymore. She’s in Tokyo, promoting a clothing line, and he is back at home coaching. “Be with me,” he whispers to the empty ice rink were every inch of wood and ice screams her name. 

 

_Be with me._

But she’s gone, they’ve waited too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments, they made my day yesterday!!!


	3. Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep...I will finish this baby tomorrow. 
> 
> Fastest fic I've ever churned out. Blame it on TS, their publicity is effin effective.
> 
> (I should also mention that I always write these in the dead of night, sleep-deprived, in a language that is not my native one and without a beta, so thank you infinitely for ignoring all the mistakes I make!)

_Time._

 

For years, one of the biggest pitfalls when they took the ice was getting ahead of themselves and off sync with their music or each other because they were too hurried, almost too eager. They would want speed and skate so very efficiently but would end up too fast, too rushed in their movements and back in the days, Marina would give them the worst kind of “pep talks” for that particular weakness (which was almost always a hoot because she would also start almost every session with the words “We need more speed”). So, rolling their eyes at her in the privacy of opening stances, they had introduced the keyword “time”, to remind each other to take a moment, feel the music and give one another room to really execute the movements, feel their surroundings and each other.

 

They always had time, they would remind each other. So much more time to achieve greatness and better themselves and learn new things and improve and improve and improve. Only now that they haven’t really seen each other more than a few days at a time in almost four months, years and years after those training sessions with Marina, it seems like their time might have finally really run out. Scott feels painfully reminded of their childhood together more than anything, coaching master class after master class from his home rink in Ilderton to London and sometimes across the country for a week or two. The little couples and single dancers he gets to coach remind him so much of himself and Tessa it’s near painful sometimes. But he manages. He finds that he loves teaching, loves working with the kids and how pure they are about their love for skating, how they never ask about if he and Tessa had been together but more about how they managed to _skate_ together the way they did. That’s a nice thing to focus on. 

 

Plus he gets to talk about them in his eternal “we” again. It was so much easier to speak of himself as a collective, because that was mostly what he’d been since he’d been a boy. He’d grown up a _we_ and coming out of their last olympics, trying to find his way back to saying “I” and “me” again was a real struggle. One that reminded him every day, that he was alone now. So he cherishes that about coaching, talking about his career, giving back to the community and keeping the years on the ice with Tessa ever fresh in his mind.

 

In his free time off-ice, in lieu of anything better to do, Scott had went on a couple of dates in the months settling back in in London. Those dates had all been set up by his buddies and cousins because the dating apps didn’t do it for him anymore. The last two girls he’d met there and went out with only wanted to talk about him and Tess and that had been enough to delete the app off his phone and only think of it with disdain and discomfort. Even still, his cousins were nice people but they didn’t really understand what he was looking for. Of the three women they had tried to set him up with, three were busty blondes with white teeth and tight clothes and they were nothing like Tessa which was why he didn’t see any of them for a second time.

 

Tessa in turn, didn’t go on dates period. She didn’t have time for that. After relocating to Vancouver to further her career in fashion design alongside getting in some pre-MBA psychology lectures in the fall, she had worked tirelessly, taking sewing and art classes and starting an internship at a goldsmith at twenty-nine. She didn’t appreciate how some people viewed her as a ‘purse designer’ in the sense that rich heiresses and It-Girl famous for sex-tapes were called “purse designers”. She wanted to really be able to create a brand and design her pieces herself, to know what she is doing and execute her vision just right, just so. The biggest project she now has going on is a dance clothing line that features everything from yoga pants to simple ice dancing dresses and she takes great pride in the fact that she has handmade every last prototype herself, with her own two hands. She isn’t perfect at it yet and for manufacturing still relies on help, but she’d never been anything but a diligent, disciplined and fast learner and she knows she will get there in time. Plus, designing for gym’s and ice rinks across Canada really speaks to her. It makes her so proud to know that little girls and boys would be training in her clothes, wear her logo on their jackets as they skated and carried on the torch of the sport. It’s completely amazing to create and be a part of that world in this way. It’s a constant source of inspiration.

 

Sometimes, she would get weak and watch old programs of Scott and her, telling herself she did it for the research, to see what had worked costume-wise and what hadn’t, but really, she just wants to see his face. See how he had looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered in the world. She would put her pencil down on her sketchbook and pause the video, trying to draw his eyes, to get the curve of his nose just right. Scott could never find anything appraisable about his features, but to her, they had always been perfect.

 

As the first year of her new life draws to a close, she finds herself going back to that past March again and again, wondering of they had made the right decision. She still thinks about that last night with him too, how he had made love to her like the world was ending in the morning. And how, in some ways, it had. They still skated together over the summer, shows and a short tour and staying away from each other had been a Task with a capital T. Which had resulted in probably the most sexually pent up performances they’d ever given and had maybe, once or twice led to starved and desperate make-out sessions in dressing room toilets, only to rein themselves in again, rattled and out of breath and remind each other of the decision they’d made. It was 2011 all over again. Then the shows ended and Scott told her that he would go teach skating and she had been so happy for him. Because he was going to be the best teacher ever. She had seen him do the master classes before, the ones where she should have been coaching too but mostly just watched him with the kids in awe. He’d been complete natural, an absolute revelation and these kids would be so lucky to learn from him. And she would get to see so little of him in the consequence.

 

Nowadays, she misses Scott really every day, like a cut off limb, feeling the phantom pain of his hands missing from her shoulders, her neck and the small of her back like pieces of flesh carved out of her body and it _physically_ hurts sometimes. And whenever they had seen each other in the past months, there’d been that undeniable underlying sense of misery trickling through every interaction and truth be told, she felt brittle even thinking about seeing him again next. It hurt so much every time, she didn’t know if she could take much more of it.

 

And wasn’t that exactly what they had tried to avoid? Why would they not go down the road of romance to preserve their friendship when now it was more difficult to maintain than ever? Yes, they texted each other constantly, about nonsense, always about complete nonsense, but constantly in contact. Still, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t the same. And she wasn’t skating. She still took dance classes whenever she could and went to the gym and physiotherapy on the regular but without Scott to dance with her, she felt awkward on ice. Like half of her was missing (because it was). So instead, she spends her time like a robot, working, growing and representing her business and appeasing her business partners about her numbers (finally getting a sense what “business partner” really means and it’s nothing like what she and Scott are, not that _that_ comes as a great surprise) and goes about her days, wondering if she’ll ever feel whole again.

 

It’s late December when they see each other for the first time in six weeks. After spending Christmas morning with her family, Tessa makes her way to the Moir home where Scott spends the holidays and has invited her to join. It’s strange coming back there after so many months but as soon as she walks in the door and the first kids and cousins flock to her to hug and kiss, the awkwardness dissipates like fog and once Scott pushes through his brothers to get to her, she is grinning from ear to ear. Being wrapped up in his arms again feels like returning to her own bones in a way that she hadn’t thought possible or even necessary before. But it’s true, she had not realized how alien her body had felt when it wasn’t draped around his. 

 

“So good to see you, T,” he whispers into the crook of her neck, the way he had so many times on the ice, after doing a great skate and the hairs on her skin stand up with electricity.

“You too,” she says and squeezes him tight when he sets her back on her feet again, unwilling to let go quite yet. But she doesn’t get to linger there much longer. It seems the whole Moir-clan wants a piece of her and she would be remiss to forsake them her attention, she has missed all of them too, so much.

 

They eat together and after, hand out presents huddled around the Christmas tree. Scott gives her a wonderfully tasteful rosé cashmere-jumper she is fairly sure Alma picked out. She holds her breath before she hands him her gift. And it’s just a small envelope but he turns it over in his hands  curiously anyway.

“Whatever could that be?” He looks at her quizzically and finally opens the envelope, his whole family staring in anticipation. Finally, he fumbles two fingers into the paper and produces a thin silver necklace, very simple, like the ones he sometimes wears – _wore_ – to competitions.

“I made it myself,” she tells him. “At the the goldsmith’s. It was my big finishing project.”

His face splits into a grin and he puts the chain in his palm, tracing it with his fingers like it’s the most precious thing and then looks up at her.

“I love it,” he says. “Thank you. Now I feel bad only getting you that lousy sweater.”

“Hey!” Alma complains from the sidelines but Tessa is quick to jump in and say that she thinks the sweater is wonderful and she can’t wait to wear it.

 

There are more gifts handed out and wines and beers had and once nine o’ clock rolls around, the family is lounging about the spacious living room, near the sparkly tree and listening to Christmas music. Tessa sits on the floor, leaning against Scotts legs who has planted himself on the couch an hour ago and hasn’t gotten up since. When “Fairytale of New York” blares through the sound system, he bends down to her to mutter in her ear, his fingers touching the necklace he has put on, as if to check if it’s still there.

“Wanna skate?” He asks and she could immediately break down and cry.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she laughs and is on her feet in seconds.

 

“I wanna skate too,” Scott’s niece says but her mother gently tucks her back to the love seat she’d been sitting on, glancing over at them just for a moment too long there. “Honey, let aunt Tess and uncle Scott have the rink for themselves this once, huh? You get to skate here all the time and Tessa’s just visiting tonight.”

“Oh, ah-huh, okay sure,” the little girl says, shrugs, then smiles at Tessa as she settles back in and cuddles herself against her Mom’s frame.

“Thanks guys,” Scott says and leads Tessa into the hallway to get dressed for the way to the ice rink, his hand pressed against the small of her back.

 

Getting back into their old rink after hours could potentially be spooky but instead it’s just making them both emotional. Their meaningless conversation dies as they put on the skates they brought from home and the eco lights take their sweet time to illuminate the ice enough for it to be safe to skate. Scott takes a deep breath, breathing in the familiar air and he can see Tess do the same,  eyelids fluttering closed, only that her face twists in something not unlike pain and he reads it clearly as wistfulness. She has missed the rink.

“How long didn’t you skate for?” He asks, prompting her to open her eyes at him.

“When’s the last time we skated together?” She answers.

For some reason that steals his breath for a second. 

“So we have to get you back to temperature, eh?” She laughs and follows him onto the ice, the glide of her blade still impeccable and weren’t for the slight wobble on her very first pirouette exit, he wouldn’t know she hadn’t skated in months.

 

It’s a joy to watch her, to take in how she’s taking it in. She was made for this, to take the ice and even with no audience or judge to watch her, she is poised and beautiful and putting in her best, as she does. If feels like their both simultaneously slip back into the people they are meant to be, back on the ice together.

“So, you wanna do the 2005 OD?” She asks him once she deems herself sufficiently warmed up and he bellows a laugh.

“No,” he smiles, “let’s try something new. Get creative.”

“Okay,” she nods, intrigued as ever at the suggestion of choreographing something off the bat. “What’d you have in mind? Some sick beats? Or something soft?”

“Soft,” he tells her and fixes his gaze on her before gliding off to hook his phone up to the PA. “I’ve thought about dancing to this with you for ever.”

 

He comes back to a sweet, whimsical melody played on the piano, then a guitar chord chiming in, then a harp when Scott has made his way back to her and she knows what the song is.

“You’re kiddi-,” she starts but he cuts her off, singing in her face and taking her hands.

“Love of my life, you’ve hurt me,” and he tugs her forward, down-ice and the music blares loudly.

“You’ve broken my heart and now you leave me.”

Scott wasn’t lying. This is soft as hell, the Queen classic taking them about the ice in long, tender strokes, the music binding them together while they sift through their repertoire like it’s second nature.

“Love of my life, can't you see, bring it back, bring it back, don’t take it away from me,” Scott keeps singing along, keeping her close with fingers, words and looks alike. 

 

Then he turns her, spins her, takes her parallel, mutters “No-touch, Latch” and they hit the cue right on instinct. Tessa feels like she’s flying. He’s singing and only looking away from her for the most necessary of orientation points and her chest is near to cracking with how happy she is to be back here with him. 

“You will remember, when this is blown over and everything’s all by the way,” Freddie Mercury sings and Scott intones when he brings her back down from an easy lift. “When I grow older, I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you, I still love you.” 

The instrumental starts and she feels so at one with him and the music, she keeps doing the Latch steps without thinking about it and he is right there with her, for every turn, every glide and every spin, his hands back on her everywhere they belong.

“Back, hurry back,” come the lyrics after the instrumental ends and she has to blink hard a couple of times to keep her vision free from tears just as Scott takes her into the final spin of Latch, the movements all still firmly in place anti fits wonderfully to the new song.

“Please bring it back home to me because you don’t know what it means to me. Love of my life, love of my life.”

Somehow he times it just right that his head lands on her collar bone just as the last bit of the harp-run ends and leaves them warm inside and panting on the empty ice.

 

Scott lifts his head and helps her stand up, beaming at her like the sun. 

“We still got it, kiddo,” he exhales and she grins so wide it almost hurts. And then his expression changes from elation to something more urgent and he takes her hands in his, bringing them to his mouth and her gliding closer to him in turn. “Come back to me.” He says and suddenly, there's no air. 

“Scott,” she mutters but he just puts her hands from his lips to his head and kisses her, soft and tender but with a hunger behind it that is so very, very _him_. God, how she’s missed him.

With the budding force behind his touches, they can’t keep on their spot on the ice, the momentum making them drift until she feels his arms wander down her frame to tighten around her waist and he is still kissing her when he guides her gently to the boards until her back is pressed flat against it.

 

It could be hours or moments that he pushes her into the wood and hard plastic. When they come back for air, she has lost all sense of space and time and there is only him. 

“T, I think we were wrong,” he says, looking at her from under knotted brows, the effort of keeping himself from tearing her clothes off right where they stand visible in the pounding vein on his forehead.

 

“No, listen,” he says when she takes a breath to undoubtedly argue with him but he has sat on this monologue too long to have her talk him out of it now. He’s right, he knows he is. He just needs her to hear him out. “I’ve tried, Tess, I’ve tried so hard this last year to picture my life with some other woman and I can imagine going to the market with someone, or holding hands or out on fancy dates but the real things? The big thing? I can’t picture my life with someone other than you. I can’t imagine building a home with someone else, getting married, raising children…I can’t imagine doing that with anyone other than you, I don’t want to. I know there’s so much at stake but we’ve gotten through twenty years together and we’re still here, aren’t we? You’re still the most wonderful person in the world to me, you’re still my best friend. Who else could it be? We made it twenty years, we can make it another twenty, and another.”

 

“I promise you, I’ll make it work, I’ll keep working every day for the rest of my life to keep this going. I love you, in every possible way and I know you love me. I don’t want to be apart from you, I don’t know who I am when you’re not there. I need you. Please, please just come back to me and make this work. And I know I’m just the sorry ass you dragged across the ice for all these years and you could have so many men a thousand times better but I just, I know I’m right for you, I can be right for you.”

“Scott!” She says and he stops short, out of breath from talking so much, when her palms land on his cheeks. “It’s okay.”

“Well, no, it really isn’t,” he says and she just looks at him. “Well, now would be a good time to say something, you know?”

“I love you,” she says. “And I can’t picture myself growing old with anyone else either. I actually do wanna do ballroom with you at ninety-five. I was wrong. In March, I was wrong.”

“Wow,” he breathes, in shock for a second. Even if he had hoped for this for so long, he hadn’t actually expected it to happen..a part of him still thinks she might turn that sentence around to a ‘no’ again. But miraculously, she doesn’t. “Really? So you’re in? We’re doing this?”

“Yep, I’m in.” She smiles, the sweetest thing she has ever seen and he thinks that winning a gold medal at the Olympics didn’t have shit on what he’s feeling right this very moment.

 

They come back to his house some time later and it’s just the adults left, still sitting around the living room and their heads spin around collectively when Scott pushes Tessa through the door, her hand firmly in his. Everyone is looking at them and he can feel the pressure of her fingers in his.

“Um, well, guys,” he starts and awkwardly brings their hands forward together, entwined as they are to show what words are escaping to convey. That they’re doing it now, they’re going in for it. They’re setting out for the ultimate goal, the most daunting challenge, but who else to take it on with than each other? Who else but the two of them who had been through so much together, had pulled each other through thick and thin and were still left standing, still thought the world of each other and still enjoyed every moment spent together. How they ever even for a moment doubted that _this_ was the way it was supposed to be, already starts seeming daft.

In the back on the room, Danny groans and that groan turns into an “Ow,” and he takes another breath before he bellows, rolling his eyes dramatically: “Fuuucking FINALLY.”

What that, the tension instantly cracks and Scott thinks the last time he has seen his mother cry like that was February last in Korea. 

 

Everyone is thrilled and it takes a while until Tessa and him finally get to bed (to the same bed, what gives?) and more time still until she is draped across his chest, naked as the first day and draws circles onto his skin with her accurately manicured fingernails.

“Did you get the feeling down there at the end that they were kinda waiting for you to propose?” She asks, grinning like nothing has ever bothered her in her life.

“Kinda,” he agrees. And then, because he can't resist: “Would you have said yes?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Scotty,” she chuckles. “We’ve got time. All the time in the world.”

And then she kisses him. 

 

_Time._

 

“Sounds good to me,” he tells her and then pulls her onto his body because if he’s got all that time now, he wants to put it to the best possible use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments, they mean the world!! <3


	4. Knees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an epilogue/bonus chapter, so: short and sweet. :)
> 
> Thank you for reading in those last few days and commenting! It made me really happy and I hope this fic made you happy in turn ;)

_Knees._

 

That one's the no nonsense technical keyword, the one that told you to bend your knees, be soft there and put the right kind of weight on your blades so you would get clean edges. It's the one word Scott never would have thought to have use for in their life off-ice.

That is until he discovers that when he whispers it to Tessa in the privacy of their bedroom, when he is hovering over her, cursing his hair for falling in his eyes and obstructing _that_ spectacular view, she bends her knees further, creating a new angle for them that gets them so much closer than before. He loves using it off-ice after that. On-ice it's in heavy duty for his new students. After Christmas, he had relocated to Vancouver to move in with Tessa and start his own chapter of Marie and Patch's dance school. It all goes swimmingly, wouldn't be for the fact that the internet freaks and the media outlets across Canada (and to his shock other parts of the world too) lose their collective shits when he announces his move and new career step.

And it's not because the world has been waiting with baited breath for Scott Moir, ice dancing coach. But because Vancouver is where Tessa lives and they might had not been too great at hiding their relationship lately. So after some deliberation, they make a statement through their press agency about how they "are romantically involved and are happy to start on a new chapter of their lives together, growing their careers separately and still skating at shows and galas together as their schedules allow". They try to keep the interviews following that announcement to the minimum and after a while, the dust settles. Mostly because Tessa feeds just the right amount of their life to Instagram which keeps people sated and almost bored with how they're just any other blah-couple out there. It's kind of ingenious, but that's Tessa for you.

The next splash is their engagement a year later, their wedding is completely private, as they've wanted it, and they manage to stay pretty below the radar. At least for the ten months it takes for Tessa to get pregnant and showing too much to keep the fact hidden anymore. But it's fine. People are adorably happy for them and for the most part, they leave them alone.

 

 ***

 

"Knees," he says, when she crushes his hand on another contraction, strong enough it feels to splinter his bones, but she listens and bends her knees forward, and then their daughter's head is crowning. 

 

***

 

"Knees, honey, remember!" Tessa says the first time her daughter is on the ice. At two years, she is mostly stumbly, much as she is off-ice, but unbearably adorable all the same. 

To no ones surprise with the parents she has, she gets the knee-thing immediately, the tiniest skates Tessa has ever seen pearly white and drop-dead-cute, holding her up as she figures out how to balance herself. A bright chime of a high-pitched laughter fills the air as she gathers more confidence while her little gloved fingers hold on to Tessa's knee where she is squatted down in front of her child. 

She is standing up still, grinning a nearly fully-toothed smile, until a new wave of laughter upsets her balance and it turns into the most tragic cries you have ever heard like a snap, even before she fully hit the ice with her heavily padded bottom. Everything is so very dramatic in this phase of her life and Tessa can't help but chuckle affectionately at the near theatrical wails, surprisingly loud for the very tiny baby theirs is.

"Oh, there, there," Scott says next to Tessa, packing away the phone he'd used to record the momentous occasion of their daughter's first ever skate, and sinks to his knees beside them, scooping the little one up from the ice in one swift move. "You're okay, that's fine. You're doing so great! You're a real skater already!"

A mess of brown curls under a Canada hat is soon buried in her husbands neck and Tessa can't help but thank the stars in the sky for what great wonders the second part of her life has had (and will hopefully continue to) have in store for her. And it's possibly the best thing in the world to have Scott there with her every step of the way, to share it all with.

"You think she'll be as talented as her Daddy?" Tessa asks him over the still muffled cries of their toddler. "Think she'll ice dance one day?"

"I think we've got a hockey player on our hands here, eh?" Scott laughs and kisses her little head. "If she really wants to do figure skating, though, she should tell us now...we'll need to know in advance so we can find her the perfect partner."

"Nothing less than what we had," Tessa grins and Scott laughs, the few more wrinkles on his face making him look even more dashing than he had growing up.

"Exactly, and she can take just as much time if you ask me," he agrees and leans over to kiss his wife, now that his daughter has stopped crying.

"Maybe not _just_ as much," Tessa grins against his lips and shivers when she feels him start to grin (but not from the cold).

It's amazing how, after all these years, he can still make her weak in the knees. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it. Thank you for sticking around <3


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